Well, that was quite the busy weekend for the two of us. So much so, that I am just now getting the time to blog about an important update on Madelyn's journey here (or I guess more accurately it's our journey to Madelyn). So I'll give that update, plus a little peek into our weekend.
It all began on Thursday, when we received provisional acceptance for Madelyn's US immigration application. What does this mean? Mostly that we can now begin the process of securing travel visas to China (for Tricia and myself) and that our adoption agency (Holt) can now begin getting Madelyn's visa for travel back to the US in order.
As for the final checklist, this leaves only two major things left. Applying for and receiving those visas and then getting a travel date! Oh, it's really, really close now and we are getting very, very excited.
Friday brought about New Year's Eve and a MOST exciting night for the two of us. Being the party animals we are, we made dinner, and at about 8 PM we put on a movie downstairs (
Duplicity, eh). About 30 minutes in to the movie, I started dozing off. About ten minutes later, I woke up to notice that Tricia was sound asleep. I turned off the movie and started watching something else (
Summer Hours), but unfortunately, I was still too sleepy, as I made it about 45 minutes before I hit pause and went to sleep as well.
When we awoke we assumed it MUST be the new year, but alas, it was only 11 PM. We thought about staying up until midnight, but figured it was 2010 in Idaho and that was good enough for us, and went to bed to get some (apparently) much needed sleep. Yeah, we're old people, aren't we?
New Year's Day brought about the Rose Bowl pitting the Ducks against (the) Ohio State University. Family and friends came over and we watched as the Ducks just couldn't stop the efficient OSU offense when they needed to and couldn't get the ball rolling with the offensive firepower either. It's probably as little disappointed as I've been over a loss all year, as it's not that the Ducks played particularly poorly, they just ran into a team that played much better than them that day (and had a ultra-talented QB who may have had his coming-out party). Halftime of the game did see my Dad, Uncle Duane, and myself playing a game of Guitar Hero World Tour. It was my first go at doing vocals in the game (my mic had been broken when we bought it) and needless to say, it was painful to all the people in the room. I was just a little pitchy (dawg).
Saturday was designated THE shopping day. We had several things we had been saving up for and it seemed like a good day to pull the trigger on many of them. On the list were: a new mattress, crib for Madelyn, new bedroom set (the old bedroom set is going to other rooms), some new bedding, our camera/video camera that we got Christmas money for, and a spin bike for Tricia. Phew.
First up was Ikea, where we tried out their mattresses and determined that the one we like best of all was a relatively cheap foam/latex mattress. At only $500 (for a king) we were awfully skeptical, though, as that was less than we spent on our super bargain mattress we are currently sleeping on. We decided to do some research on it later. We did manage to pick up a few things while there. Tricia fell in love with a feather/down pillow designed for side-sleepers and I fell in love with a $2 salad spinner and a $5 cutting board :P Ikea is the place to go for cheap kitchen supplies.
After Ikea, it was on to look at spin bikes. The place we went to had three to choose from and test out and Tricia, to no ones surprise, liked the best one :) She does have good taste. However, the bike was listed for full retail price and we figured we better do some research before we haggled on it. We're hopeful we seal the deal on that one by the end of the week!
Next up, we stopped at Macy's to look at the bedding we were interested in buying through their online sale. Instead of trying to describe it and failing miserably, I'll just post pictures of it when it's all in place in our house. I fully trust Tricia's sense of color and style, so I'm sure it will look very cool. While there, we also checked out their mattresses -- we had like the Simmons Beautyrest line in prior tests and wanted to double-check it. We also checked what we thought was the equivalent of a Stearns and Foster mattress that Costco was carrying. Make a mental note that at this point, the whole mattress purchasing process was probably at a 7 out of 10 on the stress-o-meter. Would it explode? Read on and see...
Then we were on to Bridgeport Village and the stores therein. Crate and Barrel had a bedroom set that was on clearance online, so we wanted to take a look at it in the stores (the
Loop collection, click that link to see the bed, dresser, and nightstands). We found some artwork we liked there, as well, but Crate and Barrel isn't known for it's low, low prices on stuff like that, so it will have to wait.
After that, we made our one big purchase of the day. We went to Goodnight Room (who was running a good sale) and bought Madelyn her crib! Here is a link to see
what the crib looks like. It converts to a toddler bed, day bed, and full-size bed, so it should last her for quite some time (unless she wants a princess bed or a race car bed at some point). We may be heading back there again, as they also had some swivel rockers that were on sale that we found out were actually priced very cheaply, after doing some comparison shopping.
We ended the shopping day looking at our camera options at Fry's. We're still a ways off in choosing from amongst three cameras (Canon SX20, Panasonic FZ-35, and the Sony HX1).
When we got home, we thought all was well and were proud of our accomplishments. Then things began to unravel. As we continued to have to make a choice on a mattress and other purchases, the stress of a non-stop day of shopping obviously got to us and the stress-o-meter busted straight through to 11. Not a shining moment for either of us and a process that soured us on the whole process of buying a mattress. I won't delve into all the issues with this process (impossible to comparison shop, no long-term guarantees, huge markups) -- but if you ask me, I'll feel free to vent about it.
The next morning, once cooler heads prevailed and after going for a walk at the park to talk out our strategy on how to approach the mattress purchase (we were prepared to not give any info to them and play a bit of hardball), we were actually able to pull the trigger on a few things online. So yay. Then, we braved the mattress store for one last attempt. And you know what, it worked! We actually had a nice, helpful salesperson who didn't pressure us and, in the end, cut us a deal very close to what we were hoping to get at Costco. We're going to go with the Beautyrest, as that was the one that least aggravates Tricia's IT band injury. We are both looking forward to a more peaceful night's sleep in a few weeks!!!
The rest of the night, we relaxed (finally), watched a movie (the Preston Sturges classic,
The Lady Eve), and tried to get ready for going back to work (always a bit of a chore on a Sunday night).
